


out of control

by kira_katrine



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Angst, Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:48:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26680903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kira_katrine/pseuds/kira_katrine
Summary: Gabrielle Burnham refuses to let time get the better of her.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	out of control

It was all starting to blur together.

Flashes of light burned across Gabrielle’s vision, well after they were gone--and they were never gone for long. She saw them as she jumped, crossing over vast expanses of time and space in moments. She saw them in her dreams, when she was alone at the shelter she’d made herself and managed to sleep in between her trips. Her reality nearly took the shape of her dreams, filled with nothing but the things she had seen and the things she knew she had to do, nobody but her husband’s warnings and her daughter’s screams and that cold, artificial voice that chilled her blood and  _ Michael-- _

Gabrielle saw her daughter, curled up in bed with her new mother, reading a story about a girl in a world where nothing made sense, a girl who fell, whole world spinning out of control. A girl whose mother must have missed her very much, if it were all real.

And then Michael was alone, reading that story to her father and mother-- _ not Amanda this time, to me _ \--and it was Gabrielle who was falling, Gabrielle’s heart nearly dropping out of her chest as she wanted to leap forward, but was instead pulled back, dragged upward, through the wormhole once again, heart left behind where it had fallen.

Gabrielle saw Michael living with a human family on Mars. They were getting her the help she needed, and she grew to love them in time, but she would always miss the family she came from.

Then--she was outside, running through the woods of Vulcan, grimacing in frustration as she wiped tears from her face. She had left no note, no indication of where she had gone. She stayed away from other people as much as she could. She knew she could never run far enough with her feet alone--she had to run with her heart as well. Gabrielle saw the eyes of creatures lurking in the darkness, heard their footsteps-- _ how long could a little girl possibly last? _ \--and then one  _ lunged _ \--and Gabrielle wouldn’t let that timeline stand, she  _ couldn’t _ \--she had to bring Michael home, even if it couldn’t be Gabrielle’s home. Even if Gabrielle now  _ had _ no real home. Even if all she could do was cobble together the scraps of a long-gone past and a devastated future, a future with no place in it for a child.

Michael was never back with Gabrielle, with Mike, alive, both of them there laughing and hugging her and doing their best to answer her million questions. _ All the possibilities there could ever be, and that one still eludes me. _

She was graduating from the Vulcan Science Academy, her face refusing to betray any trace of excitement or nerves as she moved forward into the Vulcan Expeditionary Group--no, into Starfleet--no, into-- _ where was she this time? _

She was being shown around the bridge of the Shenzhou, and a captain with kind eyes and a soft smile was promising her home.

She was a science officer on the Enterprise, and a half-Vulcan called Spock was disagreeing on the nature of an entity they’d found, and she was arguing back, in her own way, not a lost sister this time but perhaps a newfound friend.

She was locked in a cell,  _ and I could have helped her, if I had been there, I should have been able to-- _

She was always in danger, pursued, surrounded from all sides--Klingons this time, or Vulcans, or beasts in the woods, or their own kind, or over and over again that inhuman voice of Control-- _ it’s come for all of us, but it always comes back to her, always finds her-- _ and sometimes she couldn’t escape it--

_ She was always there in that cupboard, right there always, clutching that little stuffed rabbit, just too far away for me to hold in my arms-- _

She was standing before a room among Starfleet’s best, proud and sure, knowing her path, knowing the world’s path--

She was a red burst across the sky, hurtling through space, surely towards oblivion, coming closer, reaching towards Gabrielle, and Gabrielle wanted more than anything to reach back, to call out--but Michael was surrounded, it was in every ship, every drone zeroing in on its target, and if she lost focus--

_No._ _Some of these can’t be real._

This…  _ thing  _ was real. Control. The destruction Gabrielle had seen, that she saw around her then as she landed, as she collapsed on the ground of Terralysium, exhausted, furious, lost. It never changed. Michael, all the other people she saw, they changed on nearly every iteration.

_ They can’t all be real.  _ She couldn’t  _ let  _ them be. But she wasn’t sure she could stop all of them either--at least not the way she’d been going.

Going in this direction, into the past, Gabrielle felt pulled a thousand ways, ripped into a thousand pieces. And Time was a creature with a thousand heads, creeping towards her out of the dark, winding around her, twisting ever tighter, seeking to devour her and her daughter and everything else that there was. She had managed to cut one off, at last, the day she had finally managed to break through to Spock. But there would always be more, infinitely more.

Going in the other direction, there was only one place she always ended up. One center of everything.

She needed focus. There had to be a way, one key somewhere to stopping this thing. 

_ If the universe settles, I can find her. _


End file.
